Reddit reviews The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition
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Oxford University Press USA
This bone is called the baculum. Interestingly, some people use it as an argument about translations of one of the sources of the Bible (The j source. wrote most of genesis, exodus, and numbers).
The argument is that Eve wasn't made from a rib. When most translations say "rib", some people argue that this is a mistranslation of "baculum."
To see their evidence, look at your scrotum (If you don't have one, I'm sure someone will be eager to help). For most men, the scrotum has a line that runs down the center from the base of the penis to the perineum. This is a product of sexual differentiation of the fetus. In males, the proto-labia fuse together and the generic gonads descend into it, forming the scrotum and testicles.
The argument is that God took the baculum out of Adam to make Eve. Hence the "scar", and why humans don't have a baculum when most placental mammals do.
tl;dr: scrotums have lines from where god removed man's penis bone to make eve.
EDIT: I should probably say that I'm not an expert about this. My knowledge is not really from a religious perspective. What I know about the bible is primarily from 2 classes I took 2 years ago in freshman year out of personal interest, which were more about secular biblical scholarship (i.e., study about the book itself. sources, authorship, its history, dynamic vs static translations, etc) than religious study. You can't truly separate studying a religious text from studying its meanings and interpretations, but the class as a whole was from a secular and objective perspective.
Needless to say I'm not an expert about this type of stuff. This theory wasn't mentioned in the class; I saw it somewhere online (wikipedia maybe) and thought it was interesting. I don't think that it's a very well known argument, but it does explain some things that a direct, literal interpretation can't. For example, if you have a finger, ribs, a willing member of the opposite sex, and the ability to count, you may notice that men and women have the same number of ribs.
Ultimately, interpretations of the bible are probably as numerous as the people who read it (and those who clearly haven't). The earliest source (the J source), was written somewhere around the 10th century bce. That's 3000 years ago, twice as distant from the modern day as from the last of the mammoths. The whole thing was written over a span of centuries. It's full of contradictions, unclear references, and obvious falsehoods. The oldest version we have is the septuagint, which is in ancient greek. What few sources we have in biblical hebrew are, as one might expect, in biblical hebrew, which is dead and massively distant from modern hebrew, so translations are entirely subject to interpretation.
There's a lot we don't (and much we probably can't) know about the bible. There are tons of theories and interpretations to explain things that don't make sense. I thought the one about the baculum was interesting.
If you want to know more about this kind of stuff, read a bible designed for scholarship. For the old testament/hebrew bible, I recommend the JPS translation and the NRSV translation for the new testament (nrsv is good for both, but jps is better for the hebrew bible b/c it's from a jewish perspective). The links are for the versions I have, which are really good.
There are numerous resources that I could suggest, but these are a good start.
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Combo:
Robert Alter's Hebrew Bible
The Jewish Study Bible
The Jewish Annotated New Testament
>I'm also open to other suggestions if I have possibly missed other options that fit my needs.
The following two books are often recommended:
The Jewish Study Bible
Jewish Annotated New Testament
Both of these are academic in nature. You will find stuff about source criticism and they have scholarly articles about various things in there too. The Jewish Study Bible is also used in the Yale Online Course on the Hebrew Bible by Christine Hayes(you can find the lecture series on YouTube).
I like NRSV (NOAB), NJPS (JSB), and NABRE. I recommend getting all three. In addition to being good translations, they contain lots of scholarly notes.
\ I just saw there's a new fifth edition of NOAB.
That depends on what you are academically studying.
If you are studying the text, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) holds close to the original Greek New Testament.
The standard English translation used for academic study is the NRSV, in particular, the Oxford Annotated Bible and Harper Collins is widely used in major universities. It has the great advantage of being ecumenical, translated by people with a wide variety of theological viewpoints, rather than sectarian translations like the New World or NIV Bibles; and of being modern and thus based on a pretty up-to-date set of manuscript traditions, where the KJV (for example) suffers simply because the translators had less to go on.
Also, check out:
The Jewish Study Bible
Jewish Annotated New Testament
I would recommend, however, that if you want to academically study the Bible, you need a Greek New Testament and a Hebrew Old Testament, a Greek Lexicon and Grammar, a Hebrew Lexicon and Grammar, and several years of study.
subreddit posts on Bible versions/ translations:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/b0d0ac/probably_ask_before_but_what_is_the_best_version/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/3vtige/which_translation_should_i_read_for_cultural_and/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/8ovjr7/which_translations_of_the_bible_are_considered_to/
List of essential commentaries for each book of the Hebrew Bible:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/9p7ois/what_are_some_of_the_more_academic_bible/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/8myk8y/the_most_essential_commentary_for_each_book_of/
approachable resources for lay people on biblical scholarship and reading Recommendations for newbies:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/d21gz4/is_there_an_academic_bible_equivalent_of_the_book/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/c1c4ll/reading_recommendations_for_newbies_to_gospel/
these look nice:
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Study-Bible-Second/dp/0199978468/
https://www.amazon.com/Hebrew-English-Tanakh-Jewish-Publication-Society/dp/0827606974/
(supply your own NT)
We do not have any complete manuscripts of the "original" Hebrew. The vast majority of English translations of the "Hebrew" Old Testament are not translations of the original Hebrew, but rather a translation of a form of Hebrew that was invented in the Middle Ages by a sect (largely anti-Christian) of Jews called the Masoretes.
So for the Old Testament your choices are to defer to translations of a post-Christian Hebrew text or to translations of the Old Testament in another language. The oldest complete version of the Old Testament in any language is the Greek Septuagint, which dates to the 2nd century BC.
In my opinion, the best place to go for a translation of the medieval Masoretic Hebrew text is probably the Oxford Jewish Study Bible, translated by and commented on by Jewish scholars.
The best place to go for a translation of the Greek Septuagint is probably the Orthodox Study Bible.
The advantage of a translation of the Septuagint is that it includes the entire Old Testament. Modern Jewish and Protestant translations omit a number of books.
In my opinion, the best English translation of the New Testament is the 2-volume Orthodox New Testament, but it's not terribly readable.
I agree with another suggestion that the RSV is perhaps the best overall version. If you opt for this, be sure to purchase a version with the so-called "Apocrypha" (actually called the Deuterocanon by the Church Fathers). The New Oxford Annotated Bible is a good choice. Definitely AVOID the NRSV - Get the RSV.
The Jewish Study Bible is a useful resource with references to traditional Jewish understandings and texts as well as references to modern biblical scholarship.
Some supplementary reading. Great books!
https://www.amazon.com/The-Jewish-Study-Bible-Edition/dp/0199978468
https://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353
Two translations that seem popular at /r/academicbiblical and that are also used by the Open Yale Bible courses, are NRSV (as NOAB) and NJPS (as the Jewish Study Bible). I use them as my primary two English translations. Before I got them I did some research about what translations were probably the most accurate and those were the winners.
I've heard good things about the Jewish Annotated New Testament if you're interested in Bible commentary from a Jewish perspective (or the Jewish Study Bible for the Tanakh/OT).
Additionally, Brad Young has written a number of more popular press style books. He's an evangelical professor who earned his Ph.D. at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, mentored by Jewish scholars, so he writes as a Christian with a thorough knowledge of Judaism. A good starting point would be Jesus the Jewish Theologian.
The NRSV is riddled with distortions and inaccuracies. You can find one egregious example - John 1:14 - here. The GNT is not really a proper translation, but rather closer to a paraphrase.
My preferences are:
New Testament
[Orthodox New Testament]
(http://holyapostlesconvent.org:8081/hacwebstore/viewnormalitem.zul?itemModelNo=ONT-L), translated from the Greek and published by the Holy Apostles (Orthodox) Convent. They publish a 2-volume set with extensive patristic commentary as well.
Old Testament - Masoretic Text
The vast majority of English-language Bibles are do NOT translate the Old Testament from the original Hebrew, but rather from a text that was synthesized sometime in the Middle Ages by a sect of Jews - some say with anti-Christian bias - known as the Masoretes. Written Hebrew originally contained no vowels, so the Masoretes made special notations up and inserted the vowels they thought should appear. Still, though, it is the closest thing we probably have to the original Hebrew. If you want to consult the Masoretic Text, I would suggest you discard all Christian translations and get a copy of the Oxford Jewish Study Bible. The commentary is excellent and the editors are very frank about which verses contain Hebrew that is "uncertain", where the original meaning must be guessed at (there are thousands such verses).
Old Testament - Septuagint
The oldest complete manuscripts we have of the Old Testament are in Greek, not Hebrew - from a translation that dates back to the second century BC. Greek does not have the ambiguity that the earlier written Hebrew did, so there is not nearly the uncertainty of meanings that one finds in the Masoretic Text. Furthermore, the vast majority of New Testament translations match what is found in the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text, when the two disagree. Here I would recommend the Orthodox Study Bible for the Septuagint (but not necessarily for the New Testament, which is NKJV). The Septuagint also contains all of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, which were included by Church councils that set the Bible canon.
As a back up to all of the above, I would recommend Cambridge King James Bible with Apocrypha (which I think may be out of print), followed by the Oxford Annotated RSV with Apocrypha
That's the way I've read it explains when I was researching Biblical stuff in the past.
Lessie, I have bought this awesome thing called The Jewish Study Bible and according to it apparently part of the Babylonian Talmund addresses this here.
Right now I see:
>R. Levi said: Both Satan and Peninah had a pious purpose [in acting as adversaries].
That seems to back up that Satan's still part of the angelic court or at least doing God's work in some way.
Here's Peninah.
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users.
I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
Here is link number 1 - Previous text "JSB"
----
^Please ^PM ^/u/eganwall ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^Delete
skepticsannotatedbible.com /s
If you are interested in seriously tackling the text from scholarly perspective I would suggest The New Oxford Annotated Bible (which uses the New Revised Standard Version). You can get it online here or here.
Also since you are starting from Genesis and will be spending lot of the time with Old Testament I would suggest The Jewish Study Bible both for commentary and comparison of The Jewish Publication Society translation with ESV / NSRV. You can get the 1st edition online here.
Oh. Well in that case there's really a lot he could read.
Note: I decided to put biblical criticism here because it's something Jewish atheists (whatever we mean by atheist) eventually have to deal with. If an atheist is really is attached to their Jewish identity, they will somehow have to explain why they care about a library of texts that their friends on message boards etc. will routinely mock.
Good luck!
I will give my response to your post. I read the other comments, thinking that I would just add to what they said without repeating what had already been said, but realized that then my own comment would become fragmented if I took that into account, so I will ignore what others have said.
 
> I lied to the elders by saying I read it when I got baptised after they asked if I read the bible everyday.
I think this is a very common lie. I don't think many elders have read the Bible either.
In fact, every single time some Jehovah's Witness say "I know this is the truth, because I have investigated the evidence myself" they are lying.
Another very common lie: "I don't masturbate"
The truth is, almost everyone masturbates, most people have not read the Bible, and every single one that has actually investigated the evidence for themself has left the religion, at least mentally.
 
> I’m a slow reader (I think I might have adhd. Should I see a doctor?) and I’m up to Genesis 3.
Going to a doctor could be a good idea, perhaps. I don't know the extent of your problem.
Personally, when I haven't been reading anything for a long time, in the way I read the Bible, then it will be slower. But then if I keep at it for a few days or a week I will speed up. Sometimes if I read two hours straight, the first hour I will read with difficulty, but the second hour I read much better. Another thing that could speed up your reading is if you don't speak the words, neither out loud nor in your head, because it takes time to "pronounce" the words. But reading text without even pronouncing it mentally is not something everyone knows how to do, and I don't know how to teach it.
Though, even if you only read the text in the same speed as you speak normally, you will still easily read through the Bible in a year, unless your life is busy.
 
> I’m very very confused about Genesis 1 and 2 so far as it seems like it contradicts itself so much.
My understanding of the scientific explanation is that Genesis 2 was written first by one author, and later Genesis 1 was written by another author and added to the beginning of Genesis, and the theologies of those authors are different.
The first author, who wrote Genesis 2 about Adam and Eve, thought, according to my own understanding of the text, that humans were first created as mere animals, and then they gained "knowledge of good and bad" and became more than animals. This was why they were naked without feeling any shame, because they were just as any other animals. The author was a child of his time and culture, and thought it was uncivilized to be naked, unaware that it is a cultural idea not universal to humans.
This might also explain why the snake could speak: the author might have thought that as Adam and Eve were just mere animals, they could speak the same language as animals. Though there are other possible explanations.
Christians usually describe the events in Eden as "the Fall", but this is not supported by the text. Instead, it is "the Ascension". The two trees represent two qualities of gods that set gods apart from animals. The "knowledge of good and bad" represents the author's understanding of the mental difference between humans and animals, which he believed originally only belonged to the gods.
Jehovah lied to Adam and Eve about the tree, essentially saying that it was poisonous, to keep them from eating and ascending to the level of the gods. The snake revealed the truth, and they ate and became as gods. Jehovah felt threatened by this, and expelled them from Eden to prevent them from gaining the second quality of gods: eternal life, by eating from the tree of life.
This was the author's explanation why humans are partly divine, by having knowledge as gods, and partly animal, by being mortal as animals.
The second author, who wrote Genesis 1, disagreed. He thought God created the humans in the image of God from the outset. There was never any time when humans were only mere animals, and no "Ascension". There was never a "tree of knowledge".
The second author plagiarized a pre-existing creation myth, and made some changes. One of the changes was that he removed a battle between God and the cosmic waters, because according to the second author, God is omnipotent. The original audience knew the pre-existing myth, and could notice the difference, but most modern readers don't know about the pre-existing story.
Genesis 1:1-3 should read something like
> When God began to create sky and land—the land being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of Tehom and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
In the original story, there was a battle between the gods and Tehom. In Hebrew, "Tehom" is a proper noun, a name, even though most translations hide this.
The Watchtower Society brags about not hiding the fact that "YHWH" is a name, and transcribes it as "Jehovah", but they are still guilty of hiding the name "Tehom" and other names in the Bible such as "El". (Also, as others have stated, the Watchtower inserts the name "Jehovah" into the Bible where "YHWH" is not found, like in the New Testament.)
This is just how I understand it, though it is also based on what I have heard from scholars. I may have gotten details wrong.
When I was PIMI and read it not too carefully, I thought that the story about Adam and Eve "zoomed in" on the sixth day of creation. Thus, Genesis 1 described the creation of heaven and earth and humans, while Genesis 2 took a closer look at the creation of humans. Now I don't believe this is correct.
If one tries to read Genesis as a single coherent story, to the limited degree it is possible, then this is probably how I would read it today: First God created sky, land (a flat earth in an earth-sized snow globe), and humans in six (literal) days, then he rested on the seventh day, then after an unspecified time, Jehovah created Adam, that started out as a mere animal, but then ascended. Thus Adam and Eve were not the first humans, though it seems the first humans were gone, because there were no one to tilt the ground.
 
> Anyway, what translation should I use? ... Of course, there’s the King Lebron James Version, the American standard version and a bunch of others too. I want an actual physical copy of the bible too, I’m a young person but I’m so sick of looking at technology all the time so I’d prefer an actual bible. I also don’t want a biased translation or one that may have just added or removed things from the bible where they see fit. I want a bible as close to the original texts as possible.
I like the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) (specifically as The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed.) and the New Jewish Publication Society's Tanakh (NJPS) (as The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd ed.).
However, there is no translation without bias, or even without mistranslations. At least not one of the whole Bible in a single volume.
But there are definitively better ones and worse ones.
Some things that speak in favour of NRSV:
When I first started researching different translations to decide which ones I should get, I thought "Using 'Jehovah' or 'Yahweh' is superior to using 'the LORD', so I will start looking at translations that use 'Jehovah' and 'Yahweh'", but I soon realized that the winner was NRSV despite not using 'Jehovah/Yahweh'.
The Watchtower brags about getting "YHWH" right, but the name "YHWH" is only about 1% of the total number of words. Getting 1% of the words right, while being dodgy about the remaining 99% isn't that impressive.
Sometimes the gender neutral language of NRSV is criticized. An example of the gender neutral language is that in the New Testament the phrase "brothers and sisters" is used where many mainstream translations use "brothers". This isn't necessarily wrong, because the Greek word could refer to an all-male group or a mixed gender group. But some have said that NRSV occasionally use gender neutral language where the intended meaning is not gender neutral.
When I read the Bible, longer passages or more serious study, I use physical Bibles. My primary Bible is this: NOAB (NRSV), I also use this: Jewish Study Bible (NJPS), and then a third translation in my native language (which is not English).
For note-taking I use text files on my computer, which I edit in Notepad.
For reading shorter passages or just quick look ups or if I need to search for things, I primarily use biblegateway.com.
I highly recommend the online Yale courses on the [Old](http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145
) and New Testaments. They really frame the scriptures within their historical context and how they would have been interpreted by contemporary Jews and Christians. You can also look at stuff by David Bokovoy; he's an LDS Biblical scholar and has a lot of great things to say about the relationship between historical study of the bible and LDS theology.
As a side note, also grab yourself a copy of the Jewish Study Bible. It's a superb Jewish translation of the Tanakh (Old Testament), and has absolutely amazing commentary and annotations. It's my go-to guide for anything Old Testament, and for $30, you just can't say no. (In the same vein, you might also want to check out the Jewish Annotated New Testament).
You might check out the Amplified Bible. There is a new (2015) edition out. I haven't read it myself, but I heard a Russian Orthodox priest (in the U.S.) quote from it. Orthodox are probably the most conservative Christians that exist, so I suppose it should be safe.
Personally for the New Testament, I prefer The Orthodox New Testament. It's fairly pricy, though. There is a two volume version with commentary from the Church Fathers as well, but it seems to be out of print.
I don't know what to say about the Old Testament. The vast majority of the English translations available are translating the medieval Masoretic Text, which is not the original Hebrew. The oldest Old Testament we have is the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures dating to the 2nd century BC (i.e. around a millennium before the Masoretic Text). I have read in some sources that parts of the Masoretic Text were actually translated out of Greek back into Hebrew because the Hebrew had been lost.
If you are interested in the Septuagint, you might try the Old Testament part of the Orthodox Study Bible. If you are stuck on something that is Hebrew in some sense, then I would recommend the Oxford Jewish Study Bible over any Christian translation: at least the Jewish editors are pretty diligent about pointing out which verses contain Hebrew that is uncertain (there are hundreds). The RSV Old Testament does point out inconsistencies between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint from time to time in its footnotes.
If you do settle on the KJV, make sure you get one with all the books. Cambridge publishes a version that is faithful to the original KJV and contains all the "Apocrypha".
Others have stated that you shouldn't start with the OT, opting to go for the gospels/NT books instead. While that's fine, just know that much of what is in those books draws on or is pulling symbolism/reference from OT books.
If you would like an easier experience with the OT, I would highly recommend reading them in the Jewish Study Bible. It has fantastic commentary made up of scholars, rabbinic essays, archeological data, etc. It really brings the text to life in a way that is not possible with just a casual reading of the text.
JPS's Jewish Study Bible is a great choice.
Link
I bought three translations, two in English:
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (NRSV) (I bought the 4th ed, but I linked the 5th ed)
The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd ed. (NJPS)
Then I have two different editions of the Masoretic text, based on the Leningrad Codex.
Then I have The Kingdom Interlinear, which despite being published by the Watchtower is kept together with the non-WT Bibles due to it containing the Greek text.
These I will probably keep for a long time, as the Bible is historically a very important work, unless they are replaced with better alternatives.
Then I keep a small reference library of WT stuff, which includes a few versions of NWT, the Reasoning book, Insight, Daniel's Prophecy, etc. All of it I got from WT while PIMI/PIMO, which means that no JW can question the authenticity of the information in it.
When I want to know what the Bible says, I look it up in my three non-WT Bibles and compare them, and tentatively accept whatever they all agree on while remaining agnostic about whatever they don't agree on.
I am also in the process of reading through the Bible, to learn what it says without bias.
The Jewish Study Bible and NJPS and the New Oxford Bible with Apocrypha and NRSV have good reputation among scholars. I have seen them frequently recommended over at /r/academicbiblical, and I've heard they are used at universities and seminaries. (E.g. the Open Yale Bible courses use them.)